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Georgia: Why so many counties?
- earless1 12y agoThanks for the read. I moved to Atlanta metro area from Miami about 9 years ago and always wondered this. I currently drive across 5 counties on my way to work.
- viggity 12y agoVery interesting article. I'm from Iowa and I always knew we had a lot of counties (99), but didn't realize there were states with so many more. IIRC, the rationale for making all of our counties roughly the same size is that the state founders wanted everyone to be within a one day horse ride to the county seat so that it was easy to vote.
- gumby 12y agoThe same theory was responsible for the French département system, set up by the revolutionary government in 1791 and still a fundamental organizing structure today. I presume the Iowans were following the French example.
- maxerickson 12y agoA lot of counties fell out of the Public Land Survey System: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System (it looks like many Iowa counties are roughly the size of a Quadrangle)
- dghf 12y ago> Finally, the Normans invaded England in 1066, and they subdivided the land into counties, from which we get the title of “Count”. Other way round: "county" comes from "count", which is an anglicisation of a gallicisation of the Latin "comes", literally "companion" but forming part of a number of Late Roman military titles, such as comes brittaniarum, commander of the British field army in the 4th century.
- gumby 12y agoThank you, that sentence irritated me too.
- abrowne 12y agoAlthough the shires became counties after the Norman conquest, the rulers remained earls, probably because 'count' was too similar to a rude word.
- dghf 12y ago> probably because 'count' was too similar to a rude word. Now that's a theory I've not heard before: you could well be right. However, the Wikipedia article on the word in question says that it's not attested in English before 1230 (though it has cognates in Old Norse -- which contributed a lot of vocabulary to English, via the Danelaw settlers -- and in other early Germanic languages), and that as late as Chaucer it was not considered obscene (though by Shakespeare's time it was). But I suppose it wouldn't have to be obscene to cause problems: puerile humour appears to be part of the human condition, and we can imagine the sniggering today if a conquering foreign power tried to impose a governing class with titles that sounded like "buttock" or "scrotum". [Edits: improve phrasing; fix spelling & random capitals.]
- davidw 12y agoQuite a contrast with someplace like this, in Oregon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harney_County,_Oregon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harney_County,_Oregon Which would still qualify for the old census bureau definition of frontier, having fewer than 2 people per square mile.
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoConsider it's just north of Nevada, which has a lot of empty space!
- wglb 12y agoMay I recommend "Miles from Nowhere" http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Miles-from-Nowhere,672233.aspx http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Miles-from-Nowhere,.... Turns out that a county in Texas has fewer folks per square mile.
- davidw 12y agoLooks good - added to my wishlist. Offhand, it seems a bit like: http://www.amazon.com/Last-Empty-Places-Present-American/dp/0345495373/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1428217366&sr=8-4&keywords=peter+stark&tag=dedasys-20 http://www.amazon.com/Last-Empty-Places-Present-American/dp/... which is, unfortunately, also unavailable on the Kindle.
- maxerickson 12y agoAt the other end of the scale Connecticut and Rhode Island have discarded counties as a unit of government. And Delaware has consolidated most former county functions at the state level. The pox in many states ends up being townships, which mostly duplicate functions of the county (Especially now that we have an extensive road system and telephones).
- blahedo 12y agoNew England states (incl RI, CT) are a bit of a funny example, though, because of the way they use "towns" in a way that that I (from the midwest) associate more with counties. Across RI, CT, and MA (and maybe the northern states too), every bit of land is allocated to a "town", even if they are well outside the central population concentration of that town, and indeed even if there are multiple, differently-named, population concentrations. (These latter are often called "villages", and may cross town boundaries and in a couple cases even state boundaries. They don't really have any formal legal existence other than having a name people use to refer to them.) Anyway, so the idea that RI and CT have discarded counties as governmental units has mostly to do with the fact that they have replaced them with something else.
- maxerickson 12y agoI lived in CT briefly. I only hinted at it with the comment about townships, but I'm impressed that they recognized the redundancy and did something about it. (If I understand correctly, they moved most of the regional functions up to the state and most of the more local stuff down to the towns, so the towns do more than a town might in other states, but not quite the same things as a county)
- dredmorbius 12y agoDon't even get started on Illinois. Many land-area classifications are also left over from the old homestead system which was itself tied to railroad expansion: the railroads were rewarded with acreage across which they traversed, and major U.S. railroads still retain massive land holdings.
- learc83 12y ago>which is also why, until recently, Georgia voters would waste time voting for such low-ranking officials as coroners and dog catchers. We still vote for coroners. The corner has powers similar to the sheriff (to execute arrest warrants, serve process etc..). In some places coroners even have the power to arrest the sheriff if needed.
- 67726e 12y agoWe actually had a problem in Berkeley County, South Carolina at Christmas where the sherrif engaged in a drunken hit and run and then a high speed chase. He was charged and released for the reason that only the coroner has the power to arrest the sherrif.
- cafard 12y agoIn Colorado that was true also. When Hunter S. Thompson ran for sheriff (Pitkin County?), he had a friend run for coroner to have his back.
- erynvorn 12y agoI like this type of long read on a nice Saturday afternoon. And the comments are quite instructive.
- waterlesscloud 12y agoThanks for this. I grew up in Georgia and knew some of this, but a lot of it was new to me. It prompted me to read more about the Trans-Oconee Republic, and I found an old 20 page academic publication about it on the Open Library. The OCR is screwed up in places, so I've been making my own corrected copy the last hour or so. Open Library doesn't seem to allow for corrected versions. Looking in their email list archives, they just don't have the tech to support that, which is a shame. Maybe I'll upload the corrected version to Gutenberg or something. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL6659849M/Elijah_Clarke's_foreign_intrigues_and_the_Trans-Oconee_republic https://openlibrary.org/books/OL6659849M/Elijah_Clarke's_for...
- watersb 12y agoGreat post! I was born in Clarke county but didn't know much of this history. (When Oglethorpe was 4 years old, a baby named Joe Waters was born in Virginia. He eventually migrated south, with descendants in Georgia and Alabama. Lots of people there look like me, which is really too bad. But the overwhelming crush of people coming into the area over the past 30 years has mixed it up quite a bit. Probably an improvement.)
- selimthegrim 12y agoThanks immensely for this as well. My great-grandmother was a white woman adopted by a black couple in the 1920s in Screven County (along the SC line two counties NW of Chatham). I always wondered how that county could have such a small population.
- possibilistic 12y agoSpeaking of Georgia, does anyone here live in the Atlanta area? I would love to get to know other HNers living nearby.
- mkr-hn 12y agoI'm all the way out in Winder, which is technically within Metro Atlanta. Probably too far.
- possibilistic 12y agoA little bit far, but at least I can say I know of another HN user in Georgia. :) Send me an email if you're ever out this way, and I'll do likewise.
- raldi 12y agoBy what metric is Georgia "the largest state east of the Mississippi River"? Certainly not by area or population.
- tanzam75 12y agoGeorgia is the largest state east of the Mississippi by land area. Michigan is larger if you include part of the Great Lakes.